Chapter 8

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Once a week or so, Stacy would take the bus down to the mall to see his momma. She worked the register at Wal-Mart and he’d stand behind her as she rung up the customers, his arms folded over the side of her counter as he waited for her to go on break. “How’re you doing?” she wanted to know, and “Where are you staying?” and “Do you have enough to eat?”

She talked to him while she worked, ignoring the customers and automatically counting back change or bagging the purchases without paying any attention to what she was doing. In the beginning she asked him when he was coming home, but she didn’t like his answer and eventually she stopped asking. “That’s not my home,” he told her, or he’d counter with a question of his own—“When’re you throwing Cal out?”

“I’m not.” she’d say, too quickly because he flustered her, and she’d flash a smile at the customer in her line to gloss over the subject. “He’s my husband—”